


blued into the blood

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Devotion, Dissociation, M/M, Multiple Personalities, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Anime Compliant/Manga Rewrite, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, hide isnt afraid of the monsters in the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-29 15:35:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19403257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: The monster in the mirror smiles, and you want to rip its teeth to shreds like it's standing across from you instead of inside.There are definites in the universe and this one is yours— whatever can bleed, bleeds itself dry in your presence.





	blued into the blood

**Author's Note:**

> “Then I became Mercy with her one thousand arms; they were all I was. All   
>  over my front and from my back- I had no hidden thoughts.”
> 
> \- Alice Notley
> 
> Or, what it takes to break Kaneki Ken is what it takes to make him again.

  
  
  
1.

  


Here is the first thing you learn as the eighty-fifth regeneration of yourself, untethered and counting:

  
As long as you have something, you can lose it. 

And nobody told you that, not really. Nobody warned you. Nobody comforted you from it when you paid in fingers and toes and buckets of blood, only to get a taste for it.

How you counted down from a thousand in increments of seven and realized too late the number still doesn’t drop evenly.

Still, it took more than a dying mother and self-made home turned ash for the truth to fully set in, though.

The list of in-equivalent exchange you have stocked up in your name reads too long for there to be a direct traceable moment of change resulting in your present self.

But, it still made you.

Maybe you take maybe too much as your penance, torn bodies and ripe teeth too ready, but what you learned still isn’t equal to what you lost, so you count it up anyway.

Your life can be compartmentalized in two ways like this. What you learned yourself and what was revealed to you.

In one there’s Hide and a fire and always so much blood. And in another there's a monster wearing your face and skin you can’t shake off.

Nobody had to tell you about loss, because you learned that one all yourself. You witnessed and hurt and collected.

There has to be something to say for that, a boy torn into a body in three different parts- the before, the then, and the after.

You’re too vast now, you think, flames licking all the selves compiled in shatters, to catalog it for yourself.

  
  


2.  


Your home is on fire and the street smells like coffee beans, lit up like it’s been lined with gasoline. 

There are wounds littering your body and an army outside the door, waiting for you, even if they don’t know it yet.

You almost don’t recognize the shop when you enter it, almost forget how to place what brought you here, but then there’s orange behind the counter, and it’s not flames this time.

This time, for the first time since you gained a second half, your face feels wet and it’s only half from pain. 

Hide says, leaning onto the counter all false charm like both of you can’t smell his blood dripping onto the floor from a mile away, _it's been a while._  
  
  
And then, like you both haven’t crossed armies and paid the price for this: _it’s okay, Ken. I know. I’ve always known._

You don't move towards him, don't let yourself focus in on the dripping outside of the coffee pot. Because you love him more than anything in this moment, you think, which explains every reason you are not allowed to keep him. 

You joined Aogiri Tree to protect those you never thought could protect themselves and you ended up two friends down, a desperate made kakujas, and for what? To hear your best friend’s blood pooling quietly across from you because you still missed it, the moment you were needed most. 

The time you’d been training for you missed, and you find you can’t move through _this-_ puddling through the unintended result and your legs won’t _move._

There are multi-dimensions of this moment and in this one you are watching him, praying for the blood to stop running down his side so you can memorize this version of him. The one who’s here, now and in front of you.

There’s the Hide who held you at your mother’s funeral, the one who bled out before you, who said _eat me_ like a contract, and never once flinched at your eye patch. And there’s the one looking back at you now like he’s never going to tire of seeing you come home.

You don’t have enough fingers to count all the times you’ve made him wait for it.

  
  


3.  


If your hair could bleed, that is what you would name what it’s doing. Running down your face in uneven lines, spreading out like a web where you don’t know how to guide it back.

There’s white webbed across your face every time you catch a look in shattered glass or blood puddles, and you don’t go looking for it, but you know it’s always there, now. In this new body that will never really be _your_ body, no matter how much you hone it.

  
It’s too close and too far at the same time and some days you catch yourself remembering literature classes you sat through a lifetime ago, discussing the color white as a symbol of purity. 

It’s naive, probably, to go searching for a sense of purity in all this. So you don’t, after the first kill, and then the second and so on.

Most days, you spend the hours bleeding out the white into red, but you never measure the hours up. Don’t weigh them against each other and see who comes out victorious. You don’t dwell in memories so much now.

You break another ghoul’s wrist and deliver the body doused in its own gore. You lie it at Ayato’s feet once the CCG’s cleared, but both of you know better than to think of it as an offering.

4.

This is the trick, the one you can’t seem to remember, even trying to trace it all back to this moment:   


You are Ken Kaneki and you know your best friend like you know how to break ten fingers into halves.  


You know that when Hide says, “We’ve been looking for you,” he means _fuck you for leaving so long_. And when he says, “I’ve always been awful at this coffee stuff.” He means, _it’s alright. You came back._  


_As long as you keep coming back._  


And you, well, _you_ don’t think to say it back.

5.

It’s interesting, sometimes, to think about the series of exchanges your life turned out to be.

An old eye for a new one; a dead family for a found one; a torn apart body for a second mind; too many aliases for a name you don’t dare to use again. 

And cruelty's the commonality, isn’t it. How you’ve become less than you’ve ever been in the same way you’re more than you’ve ever wanted to be. 

But the thing is here and it’s you. The monster in the mirror smiles and you want to rip its teeth to shreds like it's standing across from you instead of inside.

You’ve never tried self cannibalism, caught a glimpse of Tsukiyama’s spiral, but it isn’t the lines you’re worried about anymore. Not with too many tethers still and a healing ability to boot. The world is too white now for all your old worry. 

If you knew you could eat yourself without the possibility of being brought back, you’d start with your hands. 

6.  


You’ve walked the night long enough to learn how to paint yourself into it and it still isn’t enough, sometimes. 

Everything you’ve ever wanted has never been what you needed, and at first you though that what you’d gotten has never been what you deserved. 

But good and bad don’t exist in a volume, and you know that now— bathed in grey and your best friend’s blood. 

The face you have now isn’t the one you started with, not the one you remember or want, but it’s the one you have. You can’t even say you made it yourself.

But, as you are learning, _deserved_ sometimes borrows from owed because suddenly your legs work and it’s _him_ , Hide, and your hands crowding the space between you where you’ve cup his face, and you can’t breathe.

Hide says, “It’s alright, Kaneki. It's okay. I’m here. I’m _here._ ” Hands scrambling up and down your sides like he can’t believe _you’re_ here when it’s never your life that’s been on the line.

7.  


Touka’s brother sizes you up with a glance the first time you're paired together, and too many times after you make the mistake of giving him the satisfaction of averted eyes. Still, he knows better than to let you see him pity you. 

You are Ken Kaneki and you have never once asked for any of the things that have happened to you, but they showed up anyway and you’ve led yourself here— back to Hide and so far past where you started it feels like someone else’s life. 

Ayoto treads around you like you _should_ be something pitiful, and you wonder if he knows you could kill him for it. Even if maybe he’s right, in a way. Taking pity on you for the futile hope fueling your mission. The way you consume bone to gain muscle. And for what? 

The same reason Ayato joined? To stop the CCG from more murder; to protect the kids who never had a choice; the ones who did; to listen to life in its entirety; to protect what you love most? There are lists of reasons running down your tongue and Touka knew half of them, Hide the rest. 

Ayato looks at you, after you give him four bodies then ten then thirty and eventually more than you care to keep count of, and most times you know he must see a monster wearing the skin of a kid

You just brush over it, now. All the places where you used to be a kid, waiting for something to stop you, something to _save_ you, and you don't glance back.

8.  


You don’t think, and maybe that’s what it comes down to- the fire raging out the windows, the full body flinch when outside the walls isn’t enough for them anymore, your body burning when you throw it over Hide’s.

Hide laughs, quiet and choked like his lungs are filling up with something other than air, and you don’t think about it. Can’t just yet. Not until the red threatening to drown you both is gone and Hide stops falling out of himself.

Hide says, “This isn’t exactly the reunion I pictured, you know,” and his laugh doesn’t stop even when the windows blow out.

9.

The ghoul, the one in the mirror, that you catch glimpses of in the blood you spill, when you sprout four arms of red and purple, when you can’t _stop_ , says: “I can take care of you.”

And you know it doesn’t mean _your_ form of care. The one that flinches at the thought of blood, who has four escape plans for every room entered.

Or, at least, not the form of care held by the Kaneki you still cling to, whether you still have a right to them isn’t something you’re willing to think about yet.

_Your_ care means Touka and Hide and Hinami and everyone at the coffee shop you never knew you needed to protect until Rize tried to bleed you dry and left you torn out and alone to pay her prizes.

You, of all people, know how deeply a ghoul’s care can differ from your own.

It's white hair spills like it's bleeding over and you watch it’s face blend into yours before it gently brushes your eyes shut. You don’t go looking for the empty in its eyes, but you find it anyway. 

You can build wonders with all the things you found that you never went looking for.

The ghoul wearing your face, over piles of bodies and masks and rot in its teeth that you'll never fully call _yours_ , says: “You’re safe now, Kaneki.” 

And you keep your eyes closed, stomach acid threatening to flow over, because you know, now, how softly _you’re safe now_ translates into, _I’m staying._

10.  


You can count all you want but you still know one thousand doesn’t divide evenly by seven the same way the blood staining Hide’s side should be yours and you’d burn yourself from the inside to make it happen.

There are definites in the universe and this one is yours— whatever can bleed, bleeds itself dry in your presence. 

Rize was wrong. You don’t hate your mother any more than you hate the neighbor next door who tried to help raise you once she left, but sometimes you see your hair reflected in passing and want to tear it out even more when you realize how it matches hers. 

The ghoul says, covered in Hide’s blood where you stumbled to cover him when he fell, when the windows blew in and the helicopter light shifted: “I can help. I can stop this. We can make this better.” 

And you’re smart enough to know that _this_ can be defined too many different ways to leave up to trust alone, but then you watch your best friend tumble before you, knees slipping in his own blood before you can reach him, and _you-_

You think: 

_maybe-_

11.  
  


You used to dream, occasionally.  
  
  
Rarely compared to the you before, but it's still there.  
  
  
The night after you wipe out a sub-category CCG branch, red doused and still too hungry, you dream in the shape of a lifetime ago.  
  
  
It's Antekiu's smell and Touka's sighing behind the counter and Hide, across from you, sinking down into his seat and play pouting with: “I try so hard to protect you, Ken.” Precise and precious at once. And there's no Rize. No CCG agent or Ayoto in sight.  
  
  
And you wonder, coffee in your hands, eye patch gone, how he always does it. How he takes the exact comfort you want to give him and twists it into words. 

  
12.

  


In one way, it goes like this:

There was a boy and there was a ghoul and then there was a fire built to take a monster apart.

In another, there is more to this story than just your blood. More than the teeth and your best friend’s smile and the way a self can shatter in the presence of grief.

More than the way Hide screams into your chest when you cauterize what you can of the wound with flames and a broken pocket knife, how you close your eyes when you've finished, arms wrapped around your best friend's breathing body, and think: _okay._  
  
  
How _you_ are not the one to pull your Kagune over before the shop implodes.

  
  
  
13.

  


When the Black Reaper slices clean through Kishou Arima’s neck from the shadows, Anteiku burns in the back. No surrounding CCG member lives long enough to even breathe it.

  


14.

  
  


You open your eyes.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
.

**Author's Note:**

> & suddenly it's 2013 again.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Comments & kudos are appreciated and make me very happy. I own nothing besides the title & really hope you enjoyed <3.


End file.
